LiveRamp acquires data clean room provider Habu in $200M deal
LiveRamp has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire data clean room software provider Habu. The acquisition aims to create a unified, interoperable platform for privacy-compliant data collaboration and campaign measurement across clouds and walled gardens.
Key Takeaways
- Acquisition price totaled $200 million, consisting of $170 million in cash and $30 million in LiveRamp stock.
- Integrated platform provides measurement capabilities across Amazon, Google, and Meta walled gardens.
- Unified technology connects decentralized data across AWS, Google Cloud, Snowflake, Azure, and Databricks.
- The transaction adds roughly 50 Habu employees and is expected to contribute $18 million in FY25 revenue.
Why It Matters
This acquisition moves LiveRamp beyond basic identity resolution into a comprehensive software layer for cross-cloud collaboration. By integrating Habu’s lightweight application layer with its own RampID framework, LiveRamp addresses the urgent need for unified measurement as third-party cookies disappear. In the broader streaming ecosystem, this allows broadcasters and CTV platforms to offer advertisers more precise attribution without moving raw PII across different cloud infrastructures. The deal highlights a trend of consolidation among independent ad tech firms aiming to compete with integrated cloud-native clean rooms from AWS and Snowflake. Watch for LiveRamp’s upcoming integration milestones with Azure and Databricks as a signal of its competitive progress in cross-cloud interoperability.
Additional Context
The acquisition of Habu by LiveRamp marks a significant consolidation in the data clean room market as the industry prepares for the final stages of signal loss. Per Mi3 (January 2024), the $200 million deal comes at a time when LiveRamp is refocusing on high-value enterprise clients, reporting 10% year-over-year revenue growth to $174 million in its preliminary Q3 FY24 results. Habu, which had previously raised $42 million from investors including Snowflake Ventures, was noted for its ability to operate within an advertiser’s owned cloud environment, a critical feature for privacy-conscious major brands. In the months following the Habu announcement, the competitive landscape has shifted toward large-scale platform integrations and further M&A activity. Per VideoWeek (January 2024), LiveRamp’s strategy mirrors industry-wide efforts to replace cookie-based tracking with person-based identifiers like RampID, which has seen adoption by major media owners such as Disney and Pinterest. Furthermore, subsequent reporting from market analysts indicates that clean room adoption is being driven by connected TV (CTV) growth, which accounted for nearly 30% of U.S. digital ad spend in late 2025 (per DataIntelo, May 2026). More recently, the strategic importance of LiveRamp’s unified data layer culminated in a definitive agreement for LiveRamp itself to be acquired. Per LiveRamp (May 2026), Publicis Groupe entered an agreement to acquire the company for approximately $2.5 billion in an all-cash transaction. This move by Publicis suggests that global agency holding companies are increasingly seeking to own the underlying data collaboration and identity infrastructure that Habu and LiveRamp built, moving toward a model where media planning and privacy-compliant data matching are natively integrated into the agency stack.
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